NEW YEAR'S SPOTTING

So following up my last post, I decided to go out and watch the 
world through binoculars at the exact moment that our official days 
counter overflows. There wasn't nearly so much activity in 
surrounding paddocks and roads tonight. I guess everyone is busy 
getting boozed up, and for that matter so was I because I hadn't 
used my one-day-per-year alcohol consumption allowance yet. I 
haven't got all that drunk this time, although I did have trouble 
standing on top of a rock earlier, and for that matter I did have 
the momentary idea that standing on that rock would get me a closer 
view of the moon, so yeah maybe I'm under-estimating.

So for all that, basically all I saw shortly after my watch alarm 
bleeped out a new year's chime was a slight flicker amongst the 
diffused distant glow of the music festival. A while later I also 
heard the crack of some fireworks from some other direction that I 
obviously wasn't looking when they were visible, and then the music 
from the festival really picked up in volume, so in a subtle sort 
of way the celebrations were ringing out all through the 
countryside. Then I went inside and watched the Sydney fireworks on 
TV - where this year they added to the tradition of making it look 
like the harbour brige is on fire, by actually managing to make it 
look like it was getting flooded at the same time. Appropriate I 
suppose, given the weather over the last twelve months.

In a way it's a weird little thing, the new year celebrations. A 
blip on the background noise of human activity, with this extra 
little bit of energy focused on one arguably arbitrary point of 
time. I imagine an alien studying the Earth from orbit and going 
"huh, I wonder what happened then". Living away from a population 
centre, it's a funny feeling when you see these momentary effects 
of society - this, or a jet flying overhead, or that time I thought 
I spotted some Starlink satellites. If you're there at the festival 
or the fireworks display, it affirms how big you are as part of a 
social group. But for someone a long way away from it, it's kind-of 
a show of how big society is - wherever you are it reaches you 
somehow.

Maybe that should be comforting, but for me at some deep level it's 
quite scary.

 - The Free Thinker.